2008 Woodie Awards
RSSChanging, but still the same
Edit Desk
By Annie Feldman
Issue date: 10/26/07 Section: Opinion
After two busy weeks of studying and paper writing, I expected to enjoy Pacing Break's four days of relaxation at home as blissfully as I had in the past two years.
Going home this Pacing Break, however, seemed different. Aside from sleeping in past noon and eating my mom's home-cooked gourmet food, I felt restless and anxious to get back to Lehigh.
For the first time in my life, I felt claustrophobic in my room at home, even though it's three times the size of my room at Lehigh. My notebooks were piled high in my closet, papers and sticky notes from high school were tacked onto my bulletin board, and my light blue-dark blue striped wallpaper seemed more juvenile than I remembered. I needed a room makeover but I couldn't let go of my room, which had been the same for the past decade.
Why couldn't I make this simple change?
Could it just be that I was long over due for a spring cleaning? With further rumination, my resistance to change struck me as more of a general description for our generation today - that we all are not able or willing to grow up and accept the inevitable changes of life.
It seems natural that as we go through college, we reflect on how our worlds have changed since graduating high school and leaving home. When we think back to the first few weeks of college, we realize a lot has changed. We've changed. Our friends have changed. Our majors have changed. Our hobbies have changed. And Lehigh, overall, has changed. Oh and most importantly, the world outside the Lehigh bubble has changed dramatically - technology, wars, globalization, medicine, food - to name a few.
Lehigh's changing social policies have recently upset students. Parties are scarce now because there are more than a dozen fraternities on probation and because of a police crackdown off campus. Students actually receive citations and not just warnings.
Despite our frustration with stricter policies regarding parties, there has been little student body effort to support their whining and complaining about police crackdown. The administration wants to change Lehigh's reputation as a big party school into a school more focused on high academic standards. Instead of taking these new policies and turning them into something positive and constructive, students complain about the policies.
Angered students should either think of ways to get the administration to alter their policies in a more collaborative and respectful manner, or simply deal with the new policies by acting responsibly.
College is not real life, but it encompasses our life right now. We need to move forward with optimistic attitudes that do not interfere or discourage what we are in college to do: Learn enjoyably with open minds.
We realize our home and our lives are never the same once we leave for college, even as we continuously try to convince ourselves otherwise. It's not possible to remain a kid forever. As much as we wish it were true, that dream of everlasting childhood fades and withers away, just as our baby blankets have withered away over the years. Maybe your initials stitched on your blanket started fading when you entered high school or the yarn caught into your bed spring in your freshman college dorm room, but our baby blankets represents more than our clinging onto the past and the familiar. We use them to cover up the changes in our lives as a way to protect and defend those things we wish to hold onto.
Whether we're coping with a parent's recent retirement, a grandfather's death, a best friend's acquiescence with drugs, or fickle decisions about what to study, resisting these changes is not the answer.
We can 'change' the way we view change.
We should be more conscious about our changing surroundings. As students, we go about our daily routines of class, sports, time for friends, extracurricular activities, and television shows - diversions to ignore or delay action on issues.
The only constant in our world today is change. Until we gather the courage to carry forward constructively, we need to do more than just the yearly spring cleaning.
Life does not revolve around what changes in our lives. But life does depend on how and with whom we go through those changes.
Annie Feldman is a junior international relations and economics major. She is a photography technician for The Brown and White.
Going home this Pacing Break, however, seemed different. Aside from sleeping in past noon and eating my mom's home-cooked gourmet food, I felt restless and anxious to get back to Lehigh.
For the first time in my life, I felt claustrophobic in my room at home, even though it's three times the size of my room at Lehigh. My notebooks were piled high in my closet, papers and sticky notes from high school were tacked onto my bulletin board, and my light blue-dark blue striped wallpaper seemed more juvenile than I remembered. I needed a room makeover but I couldn't let go of my room, which had been the same for the past decade.
Why couldn't I make this simple change?
Could it just be that I was long over due for a spring cleaning? With further rumination, my resistance to change struck me as more of a general description for our generation today - that we all are not able or willing to grow up and accept the inevitable changes of life.
It seems natural that as we go through college, we reflect on how our worlds have changed since graduating high school and leaving home. When we think back to the first few weeks of college, we realize a lot has changed. We've changed. Our friends have changed. Our majors have changed. Our hobbies have changed. And Lehigh, overall, has changed. Oh and most importantly, the world outside the Lehigh bubble has changed dramatically - technology, wars, globalization, medicine, food - to name a few.
Lehigh's changing social policies have recently upset students. Parties are scarce now because there are more than a dozen fraternities on probation and because of a police crackdown off campus. Students actually receive citations and not just warnings.
Despite our frustration with stricter policies regarding parties, there has been little student body effort to support their whining and complaining about police crackdown. The administration wants to change Lehigh's reputation as a big party school into a school more focused on high academic standards. Instead of taking these new policies and turning them into something positive and constructive, students complain about the policies.
Angered students should either think of ways to get the administration to alter their policies in a more collaborative and respectful manner, or simply deal with the new policies by acting responsibly.
College is not real life, but it encompasses our life right now. We need to move forward with optimistic attitudes that do not interfere or discourage what we are in college to do: Learn enjoyably with open minds.
We realize our home and our lives are never the same once we leave for college, even as we continuously try to convince ourselves otherwise. It's not possible to remain a kid forever. As much as we wish it were true, that dream of everlasting childhood fades and withers away, just as our baby blankets have withered away over the years. Maybe your initials stitched on your blanket started fading when you entered high school or the yarn caught into your bed spring in your freshman college dorm room, but our baby blankets represents more than our clinging onto the past and the familiar. We use them to cover up the changes in our lives as a way to protect and defend those things we wish to hold onto.
Whether we're coping with a parent's recent retirement, a grandfather's death, a best friend's acquiescence with drugs, or fickle decisions about what to study, resisting these changes is not the answer.
We can 'change' the way we view change.
We should be more conscious about our changing surroundings. As students, we go about our daily routines of class, sports, time for friends, extracurricular activities, and television shows - diversions to ignore or delay action on issues.
The only constant in our world today is change. Until we gather the courage to carry forward constructively, we need to do more than just the yearly spring cleaning.
Life does not revolve around what changes in our lives. But life does depend on how and with whom we go through those changes.
Annie Feldman is a junior international relations and economics major. She is a photography technician for The Brown and White.
